Is beetle-kill biofuel good for the climate?

Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation is a major motivation for producing biofuels, but the climate benefits of fuels derived from wood are controversial. Understanding how beetle-kill biofuelds affect the climate requires that we use lifecycle assessment techniques to understand the entire supply chain, including:

• the fuel and energy use in harvesting, transporting, and converting beetle-kill to fuels
• how the harvest of dead trees changes the amount of carbon stored in the forest in the short- and the long-term
• how the resulting biofuels substitute for and displace conventional fossil fuels
• the ability of the biochar co-product to store carbon

Knowing these details we can determine the conditions under which this biochar-producing bioenergy system could achieve carbon-negative performance.